That I Could Fly
by InnocentGuilt
Summary: George will never get used to this. This world where he was from but no longer belongs to. Sequel to: I Had A Dream. Kirk/McCoy, mentions of Spock/Uhura, George/Winona. Warnings: slash, me as an author. Disclaimer: I own nothing.


He had been to forty-eight universes over the course of thirteen years. Forty-eight alternate planes where he had lived in and for some reason no longer did. Forty-eight universes where his family could have been, but he never knew them because he was always miles away from where he thought they might have been. Forty-eight strange new worlds where he always had to adjust to their ideas of normal, just in time for him to wake up somewhere else where he would have to start again.

He wrote them down one day in an actual, bound paper journal that Jim had handed to him, saying, "Anything you can tell us would help."

For a long time, he just stared at the paper, real ink pen—like those he remembered collecting when he had belonged to this universe—held tightly between his fingers. He didn't know what to write. Didn't know what would help. Did they want to know when he realized it was crazy to fight against it, when he realized that no matter how often he wished it he would never stop waking up in crazy universes? Did they want to know when the dog—Porthos, Porthos, Porthos—had joined him? Did they want to know when he stopped writing letters to his children—men by now, no longer children—because he kept losing them in different universes, because he thought he'd never see them again?

And then he just started.

_Home-where I am now  
Nineteenth century-where I came from  
Apocalypse-the world was over  
Too Good-not even allowed to say 'darn'…_

The list went on, from most previous down to when he had found Porthos—at the time Racer, because he had shown up in a racing world where speed was everything—down further to the terrifying universe where everyone was murderous and blood-thirsty and then all the way to the beginning, to a universe he had named 'Hopeless,' the second universe his form had lived in.

_Hopeless-where I couldn't find my family_

Forty-eight universes that to this day still held pieces of him, pieces of his sanity and wouldn't give them back.

He gave the journal back to Jim after he had written everything he could, after he had remembered every single detail that he almost didn't want. He covered his son's hands with his own, his son who was now only eleven years younger than him, two years older than he had been when he left against his will. He held Jim's hand, and wished his boy were smaller, that time for him had been parallel to time with his family. He wished he could have seen some of it. "I always wished I could have been here, dear boy. Every single day."

It was mostly true.

Sometimes he had almost wished he could have died way back in the days that everyone told him about, when there had been lightning storms in space, and he had been a whole person with a whole mind. He wished it mostly these days, when his son, who he had never seen grow up, looked at him with wistful blue eyes that spoke so much of hate, hurt, and love.

He wished it because it might have been so much easier if he hadn't shown up again. If he had never disturbed Jim's happy life as a captain, husband, friend, step-father…Sure, Jim had no family to speak of, besides that he had married into, integrated into, but what use was a father to a boy who had already grown? What use was a father to a man who had learned to live without one? What use could a boy have for a father who wasn't all there?

There were forty-eight pieces of himself gone, and it shouldn't feel like a lot but it was enough, enough to where he wasn't himself anymore when he finally got home, places he loved, were places that had changed, people he knew weren't people he understood, a baby he would have died for was a blinding man who hid in shadows, and a toddler he had left with his now-dead mother couldn't be found, and it was easier to talk to a damn dog than any of the sentient beings on the ship.

At least the dog understood.

He sat for several hours one night in the silence of his quarters. He tapped his knee rhythmically and the dog lay at his feet, his eyes staring sadly up at him. Normally, he would just hop into George's lap, but tonight he knew George couldn't handle it.

He had been given two awful pieces of information that day.

Sam really was missing. He hadn't just refused to speak to Jim…likely Winona but he was scared to look further into her life. He had dropped off the map at the age of sixteen. For a few months after he ran away from home George could keep up with him…and then he just disappeared. His fingerprints vanished from the system; his name was found nowhere, no pictures…no nothing. There was no 'missing person's filed. No officials had gone looking for him. Yet there were no death certificates…and some part of George held to that.

No death certificate.

Not only that, but Admiral Archer had commed saying he would like his dog back.

It had been an unwelcome slap to his face. The dog which had accompanied him, held his sanity within his furry, little paws would be taken away from him in three week's time. The dog who had been a companion to him for three years, the dog who had helped him feel some semblance of normal…he would be gone.

Gone, like so many universes he had visited. Gone, like Sam. He would be taken away, like his children. He would be stolen, like Jim's innocence. George would be left with no familiarity. He would be lost in a home that wasn't his home for the fact that he had been gone for too long, whether by his own timeline or theirs.

He had always been gone too long and they all paid the price for it.

George tried to stay around the people he knew, his son, Len, Nyota, even Spock, but they were the senior staff aboard this ship, and tended to work on the same rotation for dismal hours at a time. He stayed in the quarters Jim had assigned for him, thankfully bereft of most signs of life. Diplomatic quarters for diplomatic peoples. Seemed odd that George should stay in such a place that the finest people of the Federation had stayed in, when he had spent the last thirteen years living in warehouses, and shoddy, rundown apartments, or on the streets.

"You're okay here, right?" Jim asked the first night he had been assigned his quarters.

George had stared at the bed, large…or large for him. He stared at the blank, shelf-less walls, looked at the blank bed and the door to the bathroom just off to the right. It could have felt like any other place he had slept, like any home he had made in universes rundown or prospering. The only thing that had changed was the people on this ship. His son and his son's husband. Nyota and Spock. They were there and somehow that made the lifeless VIP room…alive. Alive with memories that they had cast with more important people, people who had mattered and changed the world.

People who had stayed.

Not George.

George didn't belong here, had never stayed here. George had been splintered between so many universes. He had no true home.

"This is fine, Jim," he told his son…his son who didn't belong to him, belonged to no one, it seemed.

Porthos—he still called him 'Toto' when no one else was around, and the dog answered to it just as happily as he always had when George switched his name around—wandered the ship at his own leisure, going to and fro without George's company but always returning, scratching at the door and barking until George let him enter. George fell asleep, normally against his wall or in the sonic shower stall, with Porthos on his lap, as he had done for the last three years.

And the one night he didn't…

After about the fifth year, he had given up alcohol. It didn't change anything, never took him back home, never made the reality he was in any less_ real_. He had gone eight years without the taste of_ anything_ on his tongue, because if anything the booze made him want his family more. Even after eight years with the bottle, with drugs, and anything that might fuck him up, he knew it wouldn't change a damn thing. Always, after three months, sometimes less, he would wake up somewhere else. He had given up.

And then he had been home and he had been_ home_ for three weeks. I was beautiful, if bittersweet. Jim, the_ Captain_ had pulled a meeting in his quarters and they drank. There were only eight people. The bridge crew and himself. There had been shots, various sorts, whiskey, vodka, rum…the list went on. George had taken what was handed to him, never sparing a second thought as alcohol burned his throat.

He woke up in a room that wasn't his, wasn't what he knew. He knew white ceilings and that was a constant, but there were so many things in this room that hadn't been in his own on the_ Enterprise_.

He was almost shocked by the savage, rage-ridden cry that escaped his throat. 

_I was home!_ His subconscious roared._ I was home! I had family, fuck!_

He turned over on what was obviously a couch and buried his head into the cushion, trying to dampen the sound of anguish he knew to be coming from his throat. He had been_ home_. He had been home and he never wanted to leave. He had lost so much in these universes. He had lost sons and a wife, but he had almost won a son back.

Why the fuck had he…

"Dad?" A hand on his arm shocked him, as did the voice of his grown up son. "Dad, come on!"

He was too afraid to open his eyes and find that this was a hallucination. If this was a dream, he wanted to keep it. He had dreamed too many things only to find that they were lost in the cruel bouts of consciousness. He curled further into the pillows, pretending he had never heard his son's voice, pretending it was only a dream.

"Dad!"

He jerked away, a painful sob ripped from him.

"Daddy, come on!"

Painful fingers dug into his bicep, finally pulling him onto his back. George kept his eyes shut; afraid of what he would see when he opened them. He had seen so many worlds. This was just another universe. Len and Spock hadn't been able to save him. They had studies his DNA, but in the end it was useless, no matter what Spock said about finding his 'home' universe and destabilizing the balance.

He had gone somewhere else.

"Daddy,_ please_!"

He opened his eyes at Jim's voice, no longer a grown man running his own ship, but the little boy he had never known. His son, who was always somehow older than George, looked at him with frightened eyes. Somewhere in the back of the living quarters, Len crouched next to a medical bag George had never even noticed. He looked back at his son, his blue eyes so familiar, grabbing the hand that had been clutching his neck fearfully.

"Where am I?" he croaked, still scared himself. Scared he was somewhere else and this was just a replica of himself.

Jim swallowed, making it look near painful. "You're still here."

Still here…still home.

He found delights in the subtle things, especially around Jim and Len's quarters when he could visit. He liked the outdated medical tools that had been all too prominent in the last universe, yet were merely for show here. He liked the white walls and the black floor. And he had liked the broken clock that ticked arhythmically on a shelving unit next to the computer console and the way they spoke to him of eternity.

But the more time went on the more he noticed…

For every two minutes that tocked on the broken clock…only one minute passed for the chronometer on the ship.

The first time he noticed that, his heart had almost stopped.

He had been on the_ Enterprise_ for near four months and he looked at the clock…counting carefully…

What if the cosmological timeline counted to this arhythmical clock…?

He only had two more months on the outside…

He ran to Jim.

He only had an eternity in this universe, the first and forty-ninth, his home, where what was left of his sanity would linger.

.ststst.


End file.
